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Topic: Ex-Orthodox For Christ (Read 3221 times)

Hey all, While perusing another Orthodox board, I saw them discussing this website www.exorthodoxforchrist.com . They, and I too, found it rediculous and based on faulty notions of the Orthodox faith. What do you all think about it???

La Revedere,Adrian Davila

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At His Feet The Six-Winged Seraph, Cherubim, With Sleepless Eye, Veil Their Faces To His Presence As With Ceasless Voice They Cry:Ãƒâ€šÃ‚ Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!Ãƒâ€šÃ‚ Lord Most High! --From the Liturgy of St. James (Translated by Gerard Moultrie)

I don't know who these people are, but they are part of a growing trend seeking to "evangelize" Orthodox Christians by showing how Orthodox theology and belief is wrong (even though it is the same belief system that has been around since the beginning). There are many in the Evangelical church who, for reasons unknown (most likely jealousy that they are losing so many of their church members to Holy Orthodoxy), are publishing articles on the supposed errors of the Church. These articles are by "scholars" who know nothing about the church except what they've read from books and from biased Protestant mission sources. Almost all of the articles I have read that expound the fallacious arguments against Orthodoxy have been prefaced with a statement about Evangelicals converting to the True Church in great numbers (Eh...Eh...Jealousy much...). For examples, see:

www.equip.org(this is the site of Hank Hanegraaf and the Christian Research Institute...Just type in Orthodoxy in the search box and get ready to laugh.)

The North American Missions Board of the Southern Baptist Convention(go to the evangelism page, the US denominations section and click on Eastern Orthodoxy, be prepared to read, and read, and read, and then read some more...and then laugh)

Adrian

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At His Feet The Six-Winged Seraph, Cherubim, With Sleepless Eye, Veil Their Faces To His Presence As With Ceasless Voice They Cry:Ãƒâ€šÃ‚ Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!Ãƒâ€šÃ‚ Lord Most High! --From the Liturgy of St. James (Translated by Gerard Moultrie)

Read their Profile page. They never were Orthodox but exist solely to try and divert anyone with an interest in Orthodoxy from following that path.

So they are LIARS on top of everything else. Guess some people are still sore about the Campus Crusade for Christ movement to Orthodoxy.

Heres something I heard this weekend. My parent watch John Hagee and Cornerstone Church's broadcast. Sunday, after Liturgy, I came home to find that Hagee was talking about something called the "Mother/Child cult that started in Babylon or after baylon where one of the kings of Israel married Jezebel, and when she gave birth to a son, she proclaimed him divine along with herself and developed a ritualistic washing in their honour. The spring celebration in their honour was called Ishtar where we get Easter from. It said that the son rose from the dead. And Hagee went on to say something about the christian faith, once it baceme the religion of the state did not convert to "true" christianity, but held onto the mother child cult, as it has spread over the centuries and ended up being a popular thing in Rome, and so all things were simply a replacement form that false religion. In other words, Jezebel became the Virgin, and Christ the son of Jezebel. According to him, the old religion was never replaced but glossed over, so that Christ was merely a replacement for the rision son of the pagan religion. Has anyone heard about this? What do you all think (even considering the source)?

Heres something I heard this weekend. My parent watch John Hagee and Cornerstone Church's broadcast. Sunday, after Liturgy, I came home to find that Hagee was talking about something called the "Mother/Child cult that started in Babylon or after baylon where one of the kings of Israel married Jezebel, and when she gave birth to a son, she proclaimed him divine along with herself and developed a ritualistic washing in their honour. The spring celebration in their honour was called Ishtar where we get Easter from. It said that the son rose from the dead. And Hagee went on to say something about the christian faith, once it baceme the religion of the state did not convert to "true" christianity, but held onto the mother child cult, as it has spread over the centuries and ended up being a popular thing in Rome, and so all things were simply a replacement form that false religion. In other words, Jezebel became the Virgin, and Christ the son of Jezebel. According to him, the old religion was never replaced but glossed over, so that Christ was merely a replacement for the rision son of the pagan religion. Has anyone heard about this? What do you all think (even considering the source)?

The only thing I've heard about this is from a linguistic standpoint: in the Early Church when Latin priests and monks traveled to what is now England to convert the pagans residing there, linguistically they opted rather to use concepts and terms already existing in the vernacular Anglo-Saxon tongue, instead of teaching this new faith using foreign Latin words that would alienate the natives. As such, rather than using the Latin "Pascha" for the celebration of Christ's resurrection (which is theologically more accurate of course because it ties Christ to the Paschal Lamb, etc.), the missionaries chose instead to "baptise" the local customs and the term for their annual spring fertility celebration, which was in honor of this goddess Ishtar, and teach the lesson of the new faith by the parallel of "new birth" that both Ishtar the goddess of Spring (or whatever she was goddess of) and Christ both represented. Hence the word "Easter" (comes from Ishtar) in the English language, rather than "Pascha" or some derivative.

I did not know about any connection to Jezebel and her son, nor the whole angle that the Theotokos and Christ replaced them.

As for what I *think* of all this...re: the missionaries of the Anglo-Saxon pagans - while perhaps they spread the faith in this way (using local terms and concepts) out of necessity, I feel they never really explained the TRUTH to the pagans about the new faith they were being baptised into, which I feel has had reprocussions later in history (i.e. now) when in say, America, "Easter" is still tied more to fertility (bunnies and eggs) than it is to Christ's resurrection - the English language as it is used by the majority of English speakers was never baptised into the faith to the extent that other languages have been (hence so many words in OUR faith that we opt rather to keep untranslated), which is unfortunate. re: the protestant guy who thinks the Church merely replaced Jezebel and her son with the Theotokos and Christ, the Son of the living God, even if he is saying this for argument's sake against veneration of Mary or whatnot, in doing so he is degrading the entire faith - to even SUGGEST that God made Man is a leap from an old symbol to a new one, when He is nothing less than God Himself, is blasphemy, IMO.

The only thing I've heard about this is from a linguistic standpoint: in the Early Church when Latin priests and monks traveled to what is now England to convert the pagans residing there, linguistically they opted rather to use concepts and terms already existing in the vernacular Anglo-Saxon tongue, instead of teaching this new faith using foreign Latin words that would alienate the natives. As such, rather than using the Latin "Pascha" for the celebration of Christ's resurrection (which is theologically more accurate of course because it ties Christ to the Paschal Lamb, etc.), the missionaries chose instead to "baptise" the local customs and the term for their annual spring fertility celebration, which was in honor of this goddess Ishtar, and teach the lesson of the new faith by the parallel of "new birth" that both Ishtar the goddess of Spring (or whatever she was goddess of) and Christ both represented. Hence the word "Easter" (comes from Ishtar) in the English language, rather than "Pascha" or some derivative.

Do you recall where you heard/read this Donna? "Easter" does not come from "Ishtar"; that name/goddess was never as far as I have read found in the British Isles. There is a bit in Bede that speculates about a goddess "Eostre" but as far as I know that is the *only* reference to it. In Anglo-Saxon "Eost-" means "east" as in direction. And in the Spring Equinox the sun rises due East. I think that I wrote about this before. but I'll dig up my links again. All Old English words that have Eostr- in them refer either to the direction or to the Christian Feast of Easter.

As to all of the rest of the mother/child it sounds like what was written by Alexander Hislop in "The Two Babylons" first published in 1853 as a pamphlet but expanded and still used/misused/quoted/published today. If you *really* want to see it, it's on-line and in fact according to my link it has been translated into Russian! Isn't that festive?

It's a load of dingoes kidneys, but that's just my not so humble opinion.

Ebor

edited for typos... one of these years I'm going to learn how to type

« Last Edit: February 22, 2005, 03:31:44 PM by Ebor »

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"I wish they would remember that the charge to Peter was "Feed my sheep", not "Try experiments on my rats", or even "Teach my performing dogs new tricks". - C. S. Lewis

Hm, I picked it up in my linguistics class last semester, "Structure of English Vocabulary," but I don't think from the teacher, but from our textbook. I don't have it here at school w/ me (it's at my house), but it was called... History of English Words: